A Gold Coast city spokeswoman told The Guardian that the data would not be shared with "other agencies." She added: "The most important information is about country of origin, to better understand the use by overseas tourists, who are one of the primary target groups for the service.

The athletes village at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. Getty Images

"The city will be able to understand patterns of demand and use, including how many people are accessing the service, times of day and the amounts of data used. It will also be very useful for understanding numbers during events and seasonal effects."

Sydney University data privacy expert associate professor Uri Gal believes the council could access a huge swathe of personal data on each user's Facebook page.

"Depending on how we define our privacy settings on Facebook, they might be able to gain information on our Facebook friends, how many friends we have, who our friends are, the likes we have on Facebook, photos we have on Facebook and so on," Gal told ABC News.

"The very core of Facebook's business model revolves around the collection, analysis, distribution and reselling of user data, that is how they make their money."